Another day, another American billionaire opening a private museum. This time, it's Blackstone vice chairman J. Tomilson Hill, whose personal ego comple––er, arts complex will reportedly open in Chelsea in the autumn of 2017. But since I think you, dear readers, need another in-depth analysis of this trend less than a healthy teenager needs a colonoscopy, I want to dial in on a particular detail in Robin Pogrebin's story about Hill's project. Why? Because, in its own way, this detail exemplifies a trend just as rampant and fundamental to understanding the art industry's inner working as the larger private-museum phenomenon. 

This week was all about exposing truths usually hidden by the industry's glitz and glamour...

Very little in the art industry is ever a pure positive or negative if you look closely enough. It's the reason that I named this blog The Gray Market, after all. So it's no surprise that this week I found myself in a familiar bind over iconic Los Angeles gallerist emeritus Margo Leavin's $20 million gift toward renovating UCLA's graduate art studios. The school's board of regents rubber-stamped the project this past Tuesday. But after turning it over in my head for a few days, I've ultimately decided that this philanthropic connection isn't quite the shining triumph it first appears. 

This week, a parade of stories where the periphery is just as interesting as the main event...

There's an old art-world story about Agnes Martin: Allegedly, a critic once asked her how long someone should spend looking at one of her endlessly subtle, quietly beguiling works in order to fully grasp it. Martin's answer: a minute. Shocked at the brevity, the incredulous critic supposedly spat back, "A minute?!" To which Martin replied: "A minute is quite a long time."

For art enthusiasts who want to take Martin's message to its logical endpoint, Switzerland just produced the ultimate online marketplace. It's (inexplicably) called wydr, and it applies Tinder's unavoidable "swipe left or right" format to emerging artworks. If you're a young or early-stage collector, this setup probably sounds easy, clean, and appealing. If you're an older connoisseur, it probably sounds like madness. If you're me, though, the most intriguing––and troubling––aspect of wydr is a counterintuitive one: namely, that buyers using this quick-trigger platform are not nearly the extremists many of us might like to believe.  

This week, pairing up similar contestants who chose opposite fates...

Last week, ARTnews reported that Art Basel's parent company, MCH Group, made a move into the startup domain by acquiring Curiator, the self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Collaborative Art Collection," for an undisclosed amount. But with the online art space still largely a work in progress (at best), the obvious question remains: What exactly does MCH plan to do with its new addition? 

To honor the the 4th of July, a sequence of booms and flame-outs from across the industry's airspace...

This week, a collection of stories about undesired outcomes and their even less desired effects...

As many in the industry know, Swiss banking giant UBS has long been an enthusiastic supporter of contemporary art. The firm has amassed a collection of more than 35,000 works, distributed to over 870 locations in 56 nations. It has been the primary sponsor of Art Basel for over 20 years, and it recently underwrote the fair's acquisition of Clare McAndrew––lead author of the (infamous, on this platform) TEFAF Art Market Report––by agreeing to co-sponsor her forthcoming Basel-branded annual surveys of the industry in perpetuity. (In fact, McAndrew even cited UBS's participation as a major reason that she expects her upcoming work to be more thorough and well-informed than her work for TEFAF.)

UBS claims its heavy investment in the arts is about "shar[ing] a passion with many of [its] clients," spreading culture around the globe, and looking toward the future. There may be some truth to this high-flown rhetoric, but my hunch is that its primary origins lie elsewhere. More important, the continued existence of the bank's ambitious art program actually shows why collectors should be wary of trusting UBS with their money.